Part 33 (1/2)

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again?

Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead?

Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?

Some, famine-struck, shall think how long The cold, dark hours, how slow the light; And some, who flaunt amid the throng, Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.

Each where his tasks or pleasures call, They pa.s.s, and heed each other not.

There is who heeds, who holds them all In His large love and boundless thought.

These struggling tides of life, that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.

BESSIE KENDRICK'S JOURNEY.

BY MRS. ANNIE A. PRESTON.

”Cars stop twenty minutes!” called out Conductor Richardson at Allen's Junction. Then, as the train came to a dead halt, he jumped down upon the depot platform, ran along to the front of the long line of pa.s.senger cars, to where the engine was standing, and, swinging himself up into the cab, said to the engineer:

”Frank; I want you to come back to the first pa.s.senger coach, and see a little girl that I don't know hardly what to make of.”

Frank nodded, and, without speaking, deliberately wiped his oily hands in a bunch of waste, took a look at his grim, dusty face in a narrow little mirror that hung beside the steam gauge, pulled off his short frock, put on a coat, changed his little black, greasy cap for a soft felt, taking these ”dress-up” articles from the tender-box, where an engineer has something stowed away for all emergencies, and went back to the cars as requested.

He entered the car and made his way to the seat where the conductor sat talking to a bright-looking little girl, about nine years old, oddly dressed in a woman's shawl and bonnet.

Several of the pa.s.sengers were grouped around the seat, evidently much interested in the child, who wore a sad, prematurely old countenance, but seemed to be neither timid nor confused.

”Here is the engineer,” said the conductor, kindly, as Frank approached.

She held up her hand to him, with a winsome smile breaking over her pinched little face, and said:

”My papa was an engineer before he became sick and went to live on a farm in Montana. He is dead, and my mamma is dead. She died first, before Willie and Susie. My papa used to tell me that after he should be dead there would be no one to take care of me, and then I must get on the cars and go to his old home in Vermont. And he said, 'cause I hadn't any ticket, I must ask for the engineer and tell him I am James Kendrick's little girl, and that he used to run on the M. & S. road.”

The pleading blue eyes were now suffused with tears; but she did not cry after the manner of childhood in general.

Engineer Frank stooped down and kissed her very tenderly; and then, as he brushed the tears from his own eyes, said:

”Well, my dear, so you are little Bessie Kendrick. I rather think a merciful Providence guided you on board this train.”

Then, turning around to the group of pa.s.sengers, he went on:

”I knew Jim Kendrick well. He was a man out of ten thousand. When I first came to Indiana, before I got acclimated, I was sick a great part of the time, so that I could not work, and I got homesick and discouraged. Could not keep my board bill paid up, to say nothing of my doctor's bill, and I didn't much care whether I lived or died.

”One day, when the pay car came along and the men were getting their monthly pay, and there wasn't a cent coming to me, for I hadn't worked an hour for the last month, I felt so 'blue' that I sat down on a pile of railroad ties and leaned my elbows on my knees, with my head in my hands, and cried like a boy, out of sheer homesickness and discouragement.